The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen

Chapter Nine

The Conservation of Archaic Traits

The institution of a leisure class has an effect not only upon social structure but also upon the individual
character of the members of society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given point of view has won acceptance as an
authoritative standard or norm of life it will react upon the character of the members of the society which has
accepted it as a norm. It will to some extent shape their habits of thought and will exercise a selective surveillance
over the development of men’s aptitudes and inclinations. This effect is wrought partly by a coercive, educational
adaptation of the habits of all individuals, partly by a selective elimination of the unfit individuals and lines of
descent. Such human material as does not lend itself to the methods of life imposed by the accepted scheme suffers more
or less elimination as well as repression. The principles of pecuniary emulation and of industrial exemption have in
this way been erected into canons of life, and have become coercive factors of some importance in the situation to
which men have to adapt themselves.

These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and industrial exemption affect the cultural development both by
guiding men’s habits of thought, and so controlling the growth of institutions, and by selectively conserving certain
traits of human nature that conduce to facility of life under the leisure-class scheme, and so controlling the
effective temper of the community. The proximate tendency of the institution of a leisure class in shaping human
character runs in the direction of spiritual survival and reversion. Its effect upon the temper of a community is of
the nature of an arrested spiritual development. In the later culture especially, the institution has, on the whole, a
conservative trend. This proposition is familiar enough in substance, but it may to many have the appearance of novelty
in its present application. Therefore a summary review of its logical grounds may not be uncalled for, even at the risk
of some tedious repetition and formulation of commonplaces.

Social evolution is a process of selective adaptation of temperament and habits of thought under the stress of the
circumstances of associated life. The adaptation of habits of thought is the growth of institutions. But along with the
growth of institutions has gone a change of a more substantial character. Not only have the habits of men changed with
the changing exigencies of the situation, but these changing exigencies have also brought about a correlative change in
human nature. The human material of society itself varies with the changing conditions of life. This variation of human
nature is held by the later ethnologists to be a process of selection between several relatively stable and persistent
ethnic types or ethnic elements. Men tend to revert or to breed true, more or less closely, to one or another of
certain types of human nature that have in their main features been fixed in approximate conformity to a situation in
the past which differed from the situation of today. There are several of these relatively stable ethnic types of
mankind comprised in the populations of the Western culture. These ethnic types survive in the race inheritance today,
not as rigid and invariable moulds, each of a single precise and specific pattern, but in the form of a greater or
smaller number of variants. Some variation of the ethnic types has resulted under the protracted selective process to
which the several types and their hybrids have been subjected during the prehistoric and historic growth of
culture.

This necessary variation of the types themselves, due to a selective process of considerable duration and of a
consistent trend, has not been sufficiently noticed by the writers who have discussed ethnic survival. The argument is
here concerned with two main divergent variants of human nature resulting from this, relatively late, selective
adaptation of the ethnic types comprised in the Western culture; the point of interest being the probable effect of the
situation of today in furthering variation along one or the other of these two divergent lines.

The ethnological position may be briefly summed up; and in order to avoid any but the most indispensable detail the
schedule of types and variants and the scheme of reversion and survival in which they are concerned are here presented
with a diagrammatic meagerness and simplicity which would not be admissible for any other purpose. The man of our
industrial communities tends to breed true to one or the other of three main ethic types; the dolichocephalic-blond,
the brachycephalic-brunette, and the Mediterranean — disregarding minor and outlying elements of our culture. But
within each of these main ethnic types the reversion tends to one or the other of at least two main directions of
variation; the peaceable or antepredatory variant and the predatory variant. The former of these two characteristic
variants is nearer to the generic type in each case, being the reversional representative of its type as it stood at
the earliest stage of associated life of which there is available evidence, either archaeological or psychological.
This variant is taken to represent the ancestors of existing civilized man at the peaceable, savage phase of life which
preceded the predatory culture, the regime of status, and the growth of pecuniary emulation. The second or predatory
variant of the types is taken to be a survival of a more recent modification of the main ethnic types and their hybrids
— of these types as they were modified, mainly by a selective adaptation, under the discipline of the predatory culture
and the latter emulative culture of the quasi-peaceable stage, or the pecuniary culture proper.

Under the recognized laws of heredity there may be a survival from a more or less remote past phase. In the
ordinary, average, or normal case, if the type has varied, the traits of the type are transmitted approximately as they
have stood in the recent past — which may be called the hereditary present. For the purpose in hand this hereditary
present is represented by the later predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture.

It is to the variant of human nature which is characteristic of this recent — hereditarily still existing —
predatory or quasi-predatory culture that the modern civilized man tends to breed true in the common run of cases. This
proposition requires some qualification so far as concerns the descendants of the servile or repressed classes of
barbarian times, but the qualification necessary is probably not so great as might at first thought appear. Taking the
population as a whole, this predatory, emulative variant does not seem to have attained a high degree of consistency or
stability. That is to say, the human nature inherited by modern Occidental man is not nearly uniform in respect of the
range or the relative strength of the various aptitudes and propensities which go to make it up. The man of the
hereditary present is slightly archaic as judged for the purposes of the latest exigencies of associated life. And the
type to which the modern man chiefly tends to revert under the law of variation is a somewhat more archaic human
nature. On the other hand, to judge by the reversional traits which show themselves in individuals that vary from the
prevailing predatory style of temperament, the ante-predatory variant seems to have a greater stability and greater
symmetry in the distribution or relative force of its temperamental elements.

This divergence of inherited human nature, as between an earlier and a later variant of the ethnic type to which the
individual tends to breed true, is traversed and obscured by a similar divergence between the two or three main ethnic
types that go to make up the Occidental populations. The individuals in these communities are conceived to be, in
virtually every instance, hybrids of the prevailing ethnic elements combined in the most varied proportions; with the
result that they tend to take back to one or the other of the component ethnic types. These ethnic types differ in
temperament in a way somewhat similar to the difference between the predatory and the antepredatory variants of the
types; the dolicho-blond type showing more of the characteristics of the predatory temperament — or at least more of
the violent disposition — than the brachycephalic-brunette type, and especially more than the Mediterranean. When the
growth of institutions or of the effective sentiment of a given community shows a divergence from the predatory human
nature, therefore, it is impossible to say with certainty that such a divergence indicates a reversion to the
ante-predatory variant. It may be due to an increasing dominance of the one or the other of the “lower” ethnic elements
in the population. Still, although the evidence is not as conclusive as might be desired, there are indications that
the variations in the effective temperament of modern communities is not altogether due to a selection between stable
ethnic types. It seems to be to some appreciable extent a selection between the predatory and the peaceable variants of
the several types. This conception of contemporary human evolution is not indispensable to the discussion. The general
conclusions reached by the use of these concepts of selective adaptation would remain substantially true if the
earlier, Darwinian and Spencerian, terms and concepts were substituted. Under the circumstances, some latitude may be
admissible in the use of terms. The word “type” is used loosely, to denote variations of temperament which the
ethnologists would perhaps recognize only as trivial variants of the type rather than as distinct ethnic types.
Wherever a closer discrimination seems essential to the argument, the effort to make such a closer discrimination will
be evident from the context.

The ethnic types of today, then, are variants of the primitive racial types. They have suffered some alteration, and
have attained some degree of fixity in their altered form, under the discipline of the barbarian culture. The man of
the hereditary present is the barbarian variant, servile or aristocratic, of the ethnic elements that constitute him.
But this barbarian variant has not attained the highest degree of homogeneity or of stability. The barbarian culture —
the predatory and quasi-peaceable cultural stages — though of great absolute duration, has been neither protracted
enough nor invariable enough in character to give an extreme fixity of type. Variations from the barbarian human nature
occur with some frequency, and these cases of variation are becoming more noticeable today, because the conditions of
modern life no longer act consistently to repress departures from the barbarian normal. The predatory temperament does
not lead itself to all the purposes of modern life, and more especially not to modern industry.

Departures from the human nature of the hereditary present are most frequently of the nature of reversions to an
earlier variant of the type. This earlier variant is represented by the temperament which characterizes the primitive
phase of peaceable savagery. The circumstances of life and the ends of effort that prevailed before the advent of the
barbarian culture, shaped human nature and fixed it as regards certain fundamental traits. And it is to these ancient,
generic features that modern men are prone to take back in case of variation from the human nature of the hereditary
present. The conditions under which men lived in the most primitive stages of associated life that can properly be
called human, seem to have been of a peaceful kind; and the character — the temperament and spiritual attitude of men
under these early conditions or environment and institutions seems to have been of a peaceful and unaggressive, not to
say an indolent, cast. For the immediate purpose this peaceable cultural stage may be taken to mark the initial phase
of social development. So far as concerns the present argument, the dominant spiritual feature of this presumptive
initial phase of culture seems to have been an unreflecting, unformulated sense of group solidarity, largely expressing
itself in a complacent, but by no means strenuous, sympathy with all facility of human life, and an uneasy revulsion
against apprehended inhibition or futility of life. Through its ubiquitous presence in the habits of thought of the
ante-predatory savage man, this pervading but uneager sense of the generically useful seems to have exercised an
appreciable constraining force upon his life and upon the manner of his habitual contact with other members of the
group.

The traces of this initial, undifferentiated peaceable phase of culture seem faint and doubtful if we look merely to
such categorical evidence of its existence as is afforded by usages and views in vogue within the historical present,
whether in civilized or in rude communities; but less dubious evidence of its existence is to be found in psychological
survivals, in the way of persistent and pervading traits of human character. These traits survive perhaps in an
especial degree among those ethic elements which were crowded into the background during the predatory culture. Traits
that were suited to the earlier habits of life then became relatively useless in the individual struggle for existence.
And those elements of the population, or those ethnic groups, which were by temperament less fitted to the predatory
life were repressed and pushed into the background. On the transition to the predatory culture the character of the
struggle for existence changed in some degree from a struggle of the group against a non-human environment to a
struggle against a human environment. This change was accompanied by an increasing antagonism and consciousness of
antagonism between the individual members of the group. The conditions of success within the group, as well as the
conditions of the survival of the group, changed in some measure; and the dominant spiritual attitude for the group
gradually changed, and brought a different range of aptitudes and propensities into the position of legitimate
dominance in the accepted scheme of life. Among these archaic traits that are to be regarded as survivals from the
peaceable cultural phase, are that instinct of race solidarity which we call conscience, including the sense of
truthfulness and equity, and the instinct of workmanship, in its naive, non-invidious expression.

Under the guidance of the later biological and psychological science, human nature will have to be restated in terms
of habit; and in the restatement, this, in outline, appears to be the only assignable place and ground of these traits.
These habits of life are of too pervading a character to be ascribed to the influence of a late or brief discipline.
The ease with which they are temporarily overborne by the special exigencies of recent and modern life argues that
these habits are the surviving effects of a discipline of extremely ancient date, from the teachings of which men have
frequently been constrained to depart in detail under the altered circumstances of a later time; and the almost
ubiquitous fashion in which they assert themselves whenever the pressure of special exigencies is relieved, argues that
the process by which the traits were fixed and incorporated into the spiritual make-up of the type must have lasted for
a relatively very long time and without serious intermission. The point is not seriously affected by any question as to
whether it was a process of habituation in the old-fashioned sense of the word or a process of selective adaptation of
the race.

The character and exigencies of life, under that regime of status and of individual and class antithesis which
covers the entire interval from the beginning of predatory culture to the present, argue that the traits of temperament
here under discussion could scarcely have arisen and acquired fixity during that interval. It is entirely probable that
these traits have come down from an earlier method of life, and have survived through the interval of predatory and
quasi-peaceable culture in a condition of incipient, or at least imminent, desuetude, rather than that they have been
brought out and fixed by this later culture. They appear to be hereditary characteristics of the race, and to have
persisted in spite of the altered requirements of success under the predatory and the later pecuniary stages of
culture. They seem to have persisted by force of the tenacity of transmission that belongs to an hereditary trait that
is present in some degree in every member of the species, and which therefore rests on a broad basis of race
continuity.

Such a generic feature is not readily eliminated, even under a process of selection so severe and protracted as that
to which the traits here under discussion were subjected during the predatory and quasi-peaceable stages. These
peaceable traits are in great part alien to the methods and the animus of barbarian life. The salient characteristic of
the barbarian culture is an unremitting emulation and antagonism between classes and between individuals. This
emulative discipline favors those individuals and lines of descent which possess the peaceable savage traits in a
relatively slight degree. It therefore tends to eliminate these traits, and it has apparently weakened them, in an
appreciable degree, in the populations that have been subject to it. Even where the extreme penalty for non-conformity
to the barbarian type of temperament is not paid, there results at least a more or less consistent repression of the
non-conforming individuals and lines of descent. Where life is largely a struggle between individuals within the group,
the possession of the ancient peaceable traits in a marked degree would hamper an individual in the struggle for
life.

Under any known phase of culture, other or later than the presumptive initial phase here spoken of, the gifts of
good-nature, equity, and indiscriminate sympathy do not appreciably further the life of the individual. Their
possession may serve to protect the individual from hard usage at the hands of a majority that insists on a modicum of
these ingredients in their ideal of a normal man; but apart from their indirect and negative effect in this way, the
individual fares better under the regime of competition in proportion as he has less of these gifts. Freedom from
scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard for life, may, within fairly wide limits, be said to further the success of
the individual in the pecuniary culture. The highly successful men of all times have commonly been of this type; except
those whose success has not been scored in terms of either wealth or power. It is only within narrow limits, and then
only in a Pickwickian sense, that honesty is the best policy.

As seen from the point of view of life under modern civilized conditions in an enlightened community of the Western
culture, the primitive, ante-predatory savage, whose character it has been attempted to trace in outline above, was not
a great success. Even for the purposes of that hypothetical culture to which his type of human nature owes what
stability it has — even for the ends of the peaceable savage group — this primitive man has quite as many and as
conspicuous economic failings as he has economic virtues — as should be plain to any one whose sense of the case is not
biased by leniency born of a fellow-feeling. At his best he is “a clever, good-for-nothing fellow.” The shortcomings of
this presumptively primitive type of character are weakness, inefficiency, lack of initiative and ingenuity, and a
yielding and indolent amiability, together with a lively but inconsequential animistic sense. Along with these traits
go certain others which have some value for the collective life process, in the sense that they further the facility of
life in the group. These traits are truthfulness, peaceableness, good-will, and a non-emulative, non-invidious interest
in men and things.

With the advent of the predatory stage of life there comes a change in the requirements of the successful human
character. Men’s habits of life are required to adapt themselves to new exigencies under a new scheme of human
relations. The same unfolding of energy, which had previously found expression in the traits of savage life recited
above, is now required to find expression along a new line of action, in a new group of habitual responses to altered
stimuli. The methods which, as counted in terms of facility of life, answered measurably under the earlier conditions,
are no longer adequate under the new conditions. The earlier situation was characterized by a relative absence of
antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in relative
absence of antagonism or differentiation of interests, the later situation by an emulation constantly increasing in
intensity and narrowing in scope. The traits which characterize the predatory and subsequent stages of culture, and
which indicate the types of man best fitted to survive under the regime of status, are (in their primary expression)
ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness, and disingenuousness — a free resort to force and fraud.

Under the severe and protracted discipline of the regime of competition, the selection of ethnic types has acted to
give a somewhat pronounced dominance to these traits of character, by favoring the survival of those ethnic elements
which are most richly endowed in these respects. At the same time the earlier — acquired, more generic habits of the
race have never ceased to have some usefulness for the purpose of the life of the collectivity and have never fallen
into definitive abeyance. It may be worth while to point out that the dolicho-blond type of European man seems to owe
much of its dominating influence and its masterful position in the recent culture to its possessing the characteristics
of predatory man in an exceptional degree. These spiritual traits, together with a large endowment of physical energy —
itself probably a result of selection between groups and between lines of descent — chiefly go to place any ethnic
element in the position of a leisure or master class, especially during the earlier phases of the development of the
institution of a leisure class. This need not mean that precisely the same complement of aptitudes in any individual
would insure him an eminent personal success. Under the competitive regime, the conditions of success for the
individual are not necessarily the same as those for a class. The success of a class or party presumes a strong element
of clannishness, or loyalty to a chief, or adherence to a tenet; whereas the competitive individual can best achieve
his ends if he combines the barbarian’s energy, initiative, self-seeking and disingenuousness with the savage’s lack of
loyalty or clannishness. It may be remarked by the way, that the men who have scored a brilliant (Napoleonic) success
on the basis of an impartial self-seeking and absence of scruple, have not uncommonly shown more of the physical
characteristics of the brachycephalic-brunette than of the dolicho-blond. The greater proportion of moderately
successful individuals, in a self-seeking way, however, seem, in physique, to belong to the last-named ethnic
element.

The temperament induced by the predatory habit of life makes for the survival and fullness of life of the individual
under a regime of emulation; at the same time it makes for the survival and success of the group if the group’s life as
a collectivity is also predominantly a life of hostile competition with other groups. But the evolution of economic
life in the industrially more mature communities has now begun to take such a turn that the interest of the community
no longer coincides with the emulative interests of the individual. In their corporate capacity, these advanced
industrial communities are ceasing to be competitors for the means of life or for the right to live — except in so far
as the predatory propensities of their ruling classes keep up the tradition of war and rapine. These communities are no
longer hostile to one another by force of circumstances, other than the circumstances of tradition and temperament.
Their material interests — apart, possibly, from the interests of the collective good fame — are not only no longer
incompatible, but the success of any one of the communities unquestionably furthers the fullness of life of any other
community in the group, for the present and for an incalculable time to come. No one of them any longer has any
material interest in getting the better of any other. The same is not true in the same degree as regards individuals
and their relations to one another.

The collective interests of any modern community center in industrial efficiency. The individual is serviceable for
the ends of the community somewhat in proportion to his efficiency in the productive employments vulgarly so called.
This collective interest is best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness, good-will, an absence of self-seeking, and
an habitual recognition and apprehension of causal sequence, without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense
of dependence on any preternatural intervention in the course of events. Not much is to be said for the beauty, moral
excellence, or general worthiness and reputability of such a prosy human nature as these traits imply; and there is
little ground of enthusiasm for the manner of collective life that would result from the prevalence of these traits in
unmitigated dominance. But that is beside the point. The successful working of a modern industrial community is best
secured where these traits concur, and it is attained in the degree in which the human material is characterized by
their possession. Their presence in some measure is required in order to have a tolerable adjustment to the
circumstances of the modern industrial situation. The complex, comprehensive, essentially peaceable, and highly
organized mechanism of the modern industrial community works to the best advantage when these traits, or most of them,
are present in the highest practicable degree. These traits are present in a markedly less degree in the man of the
predatory type than is useful for the purposes of the modern collective life.

On the other hand, the immediate interest of the individual under the competitive regime is best served by shrewd
trading and unscrupulous management. The characteristics named above as serving the interests of the community are
disserviceable to the individual, rather than otherwise. The presence of these aptitudes in his make-up diverts his
energies to other ends than those of pecuniary gain; and also in his pursuit of gain they lead him to seek gain by the
indirect and ineffectual channels of industry, rather than by a free and unfaltering career of sharp practice. The
industrial aptitudes are pretty consistently a hindrance to the individual. Under the regime of emulation the members
of a modern industrial community are rivals, each of whom will best attain his individual and immediate advantage if,
through an exceptional exemption from scruple, he is able serenely to overreach and injure his fellows when the chance
offers.

It has already been noticed that modern economic institutions fall into two roughly distinct categories — the
pecuniary and the industrial. The like is true of employments. Under the former head are employments that have to do
with ownership or acquisition; under the latter head, those that have to do with workmanship or production. As was
found in speaking of the growth of institutions, so with regard to employments. The economic interests of the leisure
class lie in the pecuniary employments; those of the working classes lie in both classes of employments, but chiefly in
the industrial. Entrance to the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments.

These two classes of employment differ materially in respect of the aptitudes required for each; and the training
which they give similarly follows two divergent lines. The discipline of the pecuniary employments acts to conserve and
to cultivate certain of the predatory aptitudes and the predatory animus. It does this both by educating those
individuals and classes who are occupied with these employments and by selectively repressing and eliminating those
individuals and lines of descent that are unfit in this respect. So far as men’s habits of thought are shaped by the
competitive process of acquisition and tenure; so far as their economic functions are comprised within the range of
ownership of wealth as conceived in terms of exchange value, and its management and financiering through a permutation
of values; so far their experience in economic life favors the survival and accentuation of the predatory temperament
and habits of thought. Under the modern, peaceable system, it is of course the peaceable range of predatory habits and
aptitudes that is chiefly fostered by a life of acquisition. That is to say, the pecuniary employments give proficiency
in the general line of practices comprised under fraud, rather than in those that belong under the more archaic method
of forcible seizure.

These pecuniary employments, tending to conserve the predatory temperament, are the employments which have to do
with ownership — the immediate function of the leisure class proper — and the subsidiary functions concerned with
acquisition and accumulation. These cover the class of persons and that range of duties in the economic process which
have to do with the ownership of enterprises engaged in competitive industry; especially those fundamental lines of
economic management which are classed as financiering operations. To these may be added the greater part of mercantile
occupations. In their best and clearest development these duties make up the economic office of the “captain of
industry.” The captain of industry is an astute man rather than an ingenious one, and his captaincy is a pecuniary
rather than an industrial captaincy. Such administration of industry as he exercises is commonly of a permissive kind.
The mechanically effective details of production and of industrial organization are delegated to subordinates of a less
“practical” turn of mind — men who are possessed of a gift for workmanship rather than administrative ability. So far
as regards their tendency in shaping human nature by education and selection, the common run of non-economic
employments are to be classed with the pecuniary employments. Such are politics and ecclesiastical and military
employments.

The pecuniary employments have also the sanction of reputability in a much higher degree than the industrial
employments. In this way the leisure-class standards of good repute come in to sustain the prestige of those aptitudes
that serve the invidious purpose; and the leisure-class scheme of decorous living, therefore, also furthers the
survival and culture of the predatory traits. Employments fall into a hierarchical gradation of reputability. Those
which have to do immediately with ownership on a large scale are the most reputable of economic employments proper.
Next to these in good repute come those employments that are immediately subservient to ownership and financiering —
such as banking and the law. Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership, and this fact is doubtless
accountable for a share of the prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law does not imply large
ownership; but since no taint of usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to the lawyer’s trade, it
grades high in the conventional scheme. The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory fraud, either
in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a large
endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always commanded men’s respect and fear. Mercantile pursuits are only
half-way reputable, unless they involve a large element of ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade high
or low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the lower needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar
necessaries of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and factory labor. Manual labor, or even the work of
directing mechanical processes, is of course on a precarious footing as regards respectability. A qualification is
necessary as regards the discipline given by the pecuniary employments. As the scale of industrial enterprise grows
larger, pecuniary management comes to bear less of the character of chicanery and shrewd competition in detail. That is
to say, for an ever-increasing proportion of the persons who come in contact with this phase of economic life, business
reduces itself to a routine in which there is less immediate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a competitor. The
consequent exemption from predatory habits extends chiefly to subordinates employed in business. The duties of
ownership and administration are virtually untouched by this qualification. The case is different as regards those
individuals or classes who are immediately occupied with the technique and manual operations of production. Their daily
life is not in the same degree a course of habituation to the emulative and invidious motives and maneuvers of the
pecuniary side of industry. They are consistently held to the apprehension and coordination of mechanical facts and
sequences, and to their appreciation and utilization for the purposes of human life. So far as concerns this portion of
the population, the educative and selective action of the industrial process with which they are immediately in contact
acts to adapt their habits of thought to the non-invidious purposes of the collective life. For them, therefore, it
hastens the obsolescence of the distinctively predatory aptitudes and propensities carried over by heredity and
tradition from the barbarian past of the race.

The educative action of the economic life of the community, therefore, is not of a uniform kind throughout all its
manifestations. That range of economic activities which is concerned immediately with pecuniary competition has a
tendency to conserve certain predatory traits; while those industrial occupations which have to do immediately with the
production of goods have in the main the contrary tendency. But with regard to the latter class of employments it is to
be noticed in qualification that the persons engaged in them are nearly all to some extent also concerned with matters
of pecuniary competition (as, for instance, in the competitive fixing of wages and salaries, in the purchase of goods
for consumption, etc.). Therefore the distinction here made between classes of employments is by no means a hard and
fast distinction between classes of persons.

The employments of the leisure classes in modern industry are such as to keep alive certain of the predatory habits
and aptitudes. So far as the members of those classes take part in the industrial process, their training tends to
conserve in them the barbarian temperament. But there is something to be said on the other side. Individuals so placed
as to be exempt from strain may survive and transmit their characteristics even if they differ widely from the average
of the species both in physique and in spiritual make-up. The chances for a survival and transmission of atavistic
traits are greatest in those classes that are most sheltered from the stress of circumstances. The leisure class is in
some degree sheltered from the stress of the industrial situation, and should, therefore, afford an exceptionally great
proportion of reversions to the peaceable or savage temperament. It should be possible for such aberrant or atavistic
individuals to unfold their life activity on ante-predatory lines without suffering as prompt a repression or
elimination as in the lower walks of life.

Something of the sort seems to be true in fact. There is, for instance, an appreciable proportion of the upper
classes whose inclinations lead them into philanthropic work, and there is a considerable body of sentiment in the
class going to support efforts of reform and amelioration. And much of this philanthropic and reformatory effort,
moreover, bears the marks of that amiable “cleverness” and incoherence that is characteristic of the primitive savage.
But it may still be doubtful whether these facts are evidence of a larger proportion of reversions in the higher than
in the lower strata, even if the same inclinations were present in the impecunious classes, it would not as easily find
expression there; since those classes lack the means and the time and energy to give effect to their inclinations in
this respect. The prima facie evidence of the facts can scarcely go unquestioned.

In further qualification it is to be noted that the leisure class of today is recruited from those who have been
successful in a pecuniary way, and who, therefore, are presumably endowed with more than an even complement of the
predatory traits. Entrance into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments, and these employments, by
selection and adaptation, act to admit to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are pecuniarily fit to
survive under the predatory test. And so soon as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself on
these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place
in the class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would be dissipated and it would
presently lose caste. Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The constituency of the leisure class is kept
up by a continual selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent that are eminently fitted for an
aggressive pecuniary competition are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper levels the aspirant
must have, not only a fair average complement of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such an
eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the
nouveaux arrivés are a picked body.

This process of selective admission has, of course, always been going on; ever since the fashion of pecuniary
emulation set in-which is much the same as saying, ever since the institution of a leisure class was first installed.
But the precise ground of selection has not always been the same, and the selective process has therefore not always
given the same results. In the early barbarian, or predatory stage proper, the test of fitness was prowess, in the
naive sense of the word. To gain entrance to the class, the candidate had to be gifted with clannishness, massiveness,
ferocity, unscrupulousness, and tenacity of purpose. These were the qualities that counted toward the accumulation and
continued tenure of wealth. The economic basis of the leisure class, then as later, was the possession of wealth; but
the methods of accumulating wealth, and the gifts required for holding it, have changed in some degree since the early
days of the predatory culture. In consequence of the selective process the dominant traits of the early barbarian
leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and a free resort to fraud. The members of the class held
their place by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian culture society attained settled methods of acquisition and
possession under the quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple aggression and unrestrained violence in great measure
gave place to shrewd practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of accumulating wealth. A different range of
aptitudes and propensities would then be conserved in the leisure class. Masterful aggression, and the correlative
massiveness, together with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count among the most splendid traits of
the class. These have remained in our traditions as the typical “aristocratic virtues.” But with these were associated
an increasing complement of the less obtrusive pecuniary virtues; such as providence, prudence, and chicanery. As time
has gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of pecuniary culture has been approached, the last-named range of aptitudes
and habits has gained in relative effectiveness for pecuniary ends, and they have counted for relatively more in the
selective process under which admission is gained and place is held in the leisure class.

The ground of selection has changed, until the aptitudes which now qualify for admission to the class are the
pecuniary aptitudes only. What remains of the predatory barbarian traits is the tenacity of purpose or consistency of
aim which distinguished the successful predatory barbarian from the peaceable savage whom he supplanted. But this trait
can not be said characteristically to distinguish the pecuniarily successful upper-class man from the rank and file of
the industrial classes. The training and the selection to which the latter are exposed in modern industrial life give a
similarly decisive weight to this trait. Tenacity of purpose may rather be said to distinguish both these classes from
two others; the shiftless ne’er do-well and the lower-class delinquent. In point of natural endowment the pecuniary man
compares with the delinquent in much the same way as the industrial man compares with the good-natured shiftless
dependent. The ideal pecuniary man is like the ideal delinquent in his unscrupulous conversion of goods and persons to
his own ends, and in a callous disregard of the feelings and wishes of others and of the remoter effects of his
actions; but he is unlike him in possessing a keener sense of status, and in working more consistently and farsightedly
to a remoter end. The kinship of the two types of temperament is further shown in a proclivity to “sport” and gambling,
and a relish of aimless emulation. The ideal pecuniary man also shows a curious kinship with the delinquent in one of
the concomitant variations of the predatory human nature. The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious habit of
mind; he is a great believer in luck, spells, divination and destiny, and in omens and shamanistic ceremony. Where
circumstances are favorable, this proclivity is apt to express itself in a certain servile devotional fervor and a
punctilious attention to devout observances; it may perhaps be better characterized as devoutness than as religion. At
this point the temperament of the delinquent has more in common with the pecuniary and leisure classes than with the
industrial man or with the class of shiftless dependents.

Life in a modern industrial community, or in other words life under the pecuniary culture, acts by a process of
selection to develop and conserve a certain range of aptitudes and propensities. The present tendency of this selective
process is not simply a reversion to a given, immutable ethnic type. It tends rather to a modification of human nature
differing in some respects from any of the types or variants transmitted out of the past. The objective point of the
evolution is not a single one. The temperament which the evolution acts to establish as normal differs from any one of
the archaic variants of human nature in its greater stability of aim — greater singleness of purpose and greater
persistence in effort. So far as concerns economic theory, the objective point of the selective process is on the whole
single to this extent; although there are minor tendencies of considerable importance diverging from this line of
development. But apart from this general trend the line of development is not single. As concerns economic theory, the
development in other respects runs on two divergent lines. So far as regards the selective conservation of capacities
or aptitudes in individuals, these two lines may be called the pecuniary and the industrial. As regards the
conservation of propensities, spiritual attitude, or animus, the two may be called the invidious or self-regarding and
the non-invidious or economical. As regards the intellectual or cognitive bent of the two directions of growth, the
former may be characterized as the personal standpoint, of conation, qualitative relation, status, or worth; the latter
as the impersonal standpoint, of sequence, quantitative relation, mechanical efficiency, or use.

The pecuniary employments call into action chiefly the former of these two ranges of aptitudes and propensities, and
act selectively to conserve them in the population. The industrial employments, on the other hand, chiefly exercise the
latter range, and act to conserve them. An exhaustive psychological analysis will show that each of these two ranges of
aptitudes and propensities is but the multiform expression of a given temperamental bent. By force of the unity or
singleness of the individual, the aptitudes, animus, and interests comprised in the first-named range belong together
as expressions of a given variant of human nature. The like is true of the latter range. The two may be conceived as
alternative directions of human life, in such a way that a given individual inclines more or less consistently to the
one or the other. The tendency of the pecuniary life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian temperament, but
with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or administrative ability, in place of that predilection for physical
damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This substitution of chicanery in place of devastation takes place only
in an uncertain degree. Within the pecuniary employments the selective action runs pretty consistently in this
direction, but the discipline of pecuniary life, outside the competition for gain, does not work consistently to the
same effect. The discipline of modern life in the consumption of time and goods does not act unequivocally to eliminate
the aristocratic virtues or to foster the bourgeois virtues. The conventional scheme of decent living calls for a
considerable exercise of the earlier barbarian traits. Some details of this traditional scheme of life, bearing on this
point, have been noticed in earlier chapters under the head of leisure, and further details will be shown in later
chapters.

From what has been said, it appears that the leisure-class life and the leisure-class scheme of life should further
the conservation of the barbarian temperament; chiefly of the quasi-peaceable, or bourgeois, variant, but also in some
measure of the predatory variant. In the absence of disturbing factors, therefore, it should be possible to trace a
difference of temperament between the classes of society. The aristocratic and the bourgeois virtues — that is to say
the destructive and pecuniary traits — should be found chiefly among the upper classes, and the industrial virtues —
that is to say the peaceable traits — chiefly among the classes given to mechanical industry.

In a general and uncertain way this holds true, but the test is not so readily applied nor so conclusive as might be
wished. There are several assignable reasons for its partial failure. All classes are in a measure engaged in the
pecuniary struggle, and in all classes the possession of the pecuniary traits counts towards the success and survival
of the individual. Wherever the pecuniary culture prevails, the selective process by which men’s habits of thought are
shaped, and by which the survival of rival lines of descent is decided, proceeds proximately on the basis of fitness
for acquisition. Consequently, if it were not for the fact that pecuniary efficiency is on the whole incompatible with
industrial efficiency, the selective action of all occupations would tend to the unmitigated dominance of the pecuniary
temperament. The result would be the installation of what has been known as the “economic man,” as the normal and
definitive type of human nature. But the “economic man,” whose only interest is the self-regarding one and whose only
human trait is prudence is useless for the purposes of modern industry.

The modern industry requires an impersonal, non-invidious interest in the work in hand. Without this the elaborate
processes of industry would be impossible, and would, indeed, never have been conceived. This interest in work
differentiates the workman from the criminal on the one hand, and from the captain of industry on the other. Since work
must be done in order to the continued life of the community, there results a qualified selection favoring the
spiritual aptitude for work, within a certain range of occupations. This much, however, is to be conceded, that even
within the industrial occupations the selective elimination of the pecuniary traits is an uncertain process, and that
there is consequently an appreciable survival of the barbarian temperament even within these occupations. On this
account there is at present no broad distinction in this respect between the leisure-class character and the character
of the common run of the population.

The whole question as to a class distinction in respect to spiritual make-up is also obscured by the presence, in
all classes of society, of acquired habits of life that closely simulate inherited traits and at the same time act to
develop in the entire body of the population the traits which they simulate. These acquired habits, or assumed traits
of character, are most commonly of an aristocratic cast. The prescriptive position of the leisure class as the exemplar
of reputability has imposed many features of the leisure-class theory of life upon the lower classes; with the result
that there goes on, always and throughout society, a more or less persistent cultivation of these aristocratic traits.
On this ground also these traits have a better chance of survival among the body of the people than would be the case
if it were not for the precept and example of the leisure class. As one channel, and an important one, through which
this transfusion of aristocratic views of life, and consequently more or less archaic traits of character goes on, may
be mentioned the class of domestic servants. These have their notions of what is good and beautiful shaped by contact
with the master class and carry the preconceptions so acquired back among their low-born equals, and so disseminate the
higher ideals abroad through the community without the loss of time which this dissemination might otherwise suffer.
The saying “Like master, like man,” has a greater significance than is commonly appreciated for the rapid popular
acceptance of many elements of upper-class culture.

There is also a further range of facts that go to lessen class differences as regards the survival of the pecuniary
virtues. The pecuniary struggle produces an underfed class, of large proportions. This underfeeding consists in a
deficiency of the necessaries of life or of the necessaries of a decent expenditure. In either case the result is a
closely enforced struggle for the means with which to meet the daily needs; whether it be the physical or the higher
needs. The strain of self-assertion against odds takes up the whole energy of the individual; he bends his efforts to
compass his own invidious ends alone, and becomes continually more narrowly self-seeking. The industrial traits in this
way tend to obsolescence through disuse. Indirectly, therefore, by imposing a scheme of pecuniary decency and by
withdrawing as much as may be of the means of life from the lower classes, the institution of a leisure class acts to
conserve the pecuniary traits in the body of the population. The result is an assimilation of the lower classes to the
type of human nature that belongs primarily to the upper classes only. It appears, therefore, that there is no wide
difference in temperament between the upper and the lower classes; but it appears also that the absence of such a
difference is in good part due to the prescriptive example of the leisure class and to the popular acceptance of those
broad principles of conspicuous waste and pecuniary emulation on which the institution of a leisure class rests. The
institution acts to lower the industrial efficiency of the community and retard the adaptation of human nature to the
exigencies of modern industrial life. It affects the prevalent or effective human nature in a conservative direction,
(1) by direct transmission of archaic traits, through inheritance within the class and wherever the leisure-class blood
is transfused outside the class, and (2) by conserving and fortifying the traditions of the archaic regime, and so
making the chances of survival of barbarian traits greater also outside the range of transfusion of leisure-class
blood.

But little if anything has been done towards collecting or digesting data that are of special significance for the
question of survival or elimination of traits in the modern populations. Little of a tangible character can therefore
be offered in support of the view here taken, beyond a discursive review of such everyday facts as lie ready to hand.
Such a recital can scarcely avoid being commonplace and tedious, but for all that it seems necessary to the
completeness of the argument, even in the meager outline in which it is here attempted. A degree of indulgence may
therefore fairly be bespoken for the succeeding chapters, which offer a fragmentary recital of this kind.